Chapter 33
Hadley
Iwake to find a pretty face smiling down at me, but it’s not the one I want to see. Not even close.
Sorry, Nia.
The smile she gives me is full of sadness. “He’s awake, Mama.”
Mom shifts closer, hovering. I let my gaze drift to the ceiling. I can’t do this right now. Not when I have myself to blame for the injuries. For the mountains of ranch debt and the fact Maggie isn’t here.
Which I know will be Nia’s first question.
The door to my room opens, and Gemma and Kayley file in. “Hey, bud.” Kayley scans my body that sports a cast on my right arm. “Guess you showed him.”
She smiles, but the light is nowhere to be seen in her eyes. Her spark for life has disappeared, not even resuscitated by our sibling banter that usually fires her up.
“Okay, I’m just going to say it.” Nia sighs. “Where’s Maggie?”
I swallow around the stone doing its damn best to occlude my airways.
“Hads, what did you do?” Gemma folds her arms, frowning at me.
Huh, trust these three to take her side. While I’m stuck in a hospital bed, no less.
Hell, I’m Team Maggie, too. But the fact it took all of two minutes for them to come to the conclusion that I did something kind of stings.
“She was in the arena . . .” I start.
“Oh no! She’s hurt too?” Nia’s face is distraught.
“No, Nini, nothing like that. She was there, Brady said she was when”—I glance up at Mom—“I was being carried out of the arena. But I don’t have my phone.”
“Does she know where you are?” Mom asks.
“Guess so.” The words suck the air from the room and every gaze drops to the floor.
Fuck.
“Let’s focus on getting you better,” Mom offers, her hand patting mine on the bed.
“Yeah, and by the way. You’re quitting that bull riding shit.” Kayley moves the bed rail down and sits on the side of the bed. “There’s a part-time gig at the seed and feed. It’s all yours.”
“No, Kales. Weekdays I have to ranch.”
“Bullshit. You can ranch any day of the week. What are you not telling us?” Her eyes narrow and her lips make a thin line.
“It’s . . .” I fling my focus back to the ceiling. “Things are not great with the bank.”
“They never are,” Mom starts.
I hold a hand up. “Last year’s dry spell hit us harder than the one before. I took out an extension on the overdraft mortgage to cover the hay and repairs . . .”
“What are we talking?” Kayley asks, shifting on the bed. “Don’t sugarcoat it, either.”
“Just over a quarter of a million.”
“That’s not too bad for ranch debt,” Mom says, confused.
“Yeah, but they’ve recalled our loan. We have a month left. Debt collection processes have started.”
Every face goes slack with shock. Kayley gets up and leaves the room. Nia starts crying. Gemma sighs, dropping into a chair, taking to staring out the window.
Mom steps closer. “And you thought getting yourself killed would solve our problem?” Her eyes are homed in on me, intensifying as I shift on the bed, sitting up.
“I—”
Her hands close over mine. “No, Hadley, I will not lose a husband only to lose my son as well. No matter the reason. This ends now. I’ll sell the ranch if I have to. Kayley does well living in town. We’d make do.”
“No, that’s not ha—”
She shakes her head.
“I’ve been coasting as a parent for too long.
Today I’m putting my foot down. I don’t care you’re a grown man who towers over me.
I don’t care you’re more capable than myself and your father put together.
I care that you don’t kill yourself over something as stupid as a place and a bunch of possessions. This ends now.”
I’m stunned.
My mother’s lived the last decade a shell of her former self.
This is the first glimpse of the woman she used to be.
It only took us potentially losing everything for her to wake up.
She leans down, and her forehead meets mine. The sentiment has every memory of Maggie flying through my mind as I close my eyes.
“I will not lose my son. You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You quit that rodeo business. Sooner rather than later.”
I can only stare at the wall across the room as they all leave, promising to visit if I’m stuck here for another few days.
I spend the next few hours running through every single possibility. Until nature calls and I’m desperate for the bathroom. I swing my legs over the bed, sitting up.
My head swims.
I slam my eyes shut, but the bed under me sways.
As if on cue, a nurse pushes through the doorway. “Hold on, cowboy. You’re going to need a hand the first time back on your feet.”
She swings an arm around my shoulders and helps me to my feet slowly. I shuffle my feet like it’s been an age since I’ve used my legs, not a day.
My arm hangs heavy at my side as I reach the toilet, and she sits me down and leaves. The nurse call button is lit up in green on the wall by the toilet.
That’s when it hits me, I’m too young to be in a hospital bed. I’m too busy trying to make ends meet to end up injured every other weekend.
Closing my eyes, right here on this porcelain seat in Kennedy General Hospital, I make a promise to retire after this year. I have to take a punt at the championship. It could pay off almost all our debt.
We’d keep the ranch.
I could afford to pay for Nia’s college education next year with the income from the ranch if it wasn’t servicing debt.
One last rodeo to save it all.
Maybe Kales is right . . . I’m addicted.
Hi, my name is Hadley Jones, and I’m a rodeo adrenaline addict.
The doc in the white coat stands at the end of my bed. I sit on the side, dressed and ready to get the hell out of here. Brady stands, grabbing my overnight bag, his to-go coffee gripped in one hand like he’s ready to make a run for it, too.
The white coat pins me with his seriousness. “I would highly recommend never getting on another bull. The concussion you have is not to be taken lightly. Another hit to your head could result in permanent injury or worse.”
Brady’s gaze alternates from me to the doctor.
I meet the white coat’s tone. “There’s only another week until the season’s over, I can ride it out.”
“Another week won’t change the effects of this concussion. Nor will it keep you from harm if you come off and take another hit. Please listen to what I’m telling you, Hadley. I’m not trying to ruin your career. This is not about that. It’s about keeping you safe. Alive.”
I slip off the bed and stave off the wobble threatening to knock my legs out from under me by gripping the edge of the mattress.
“I’m fine,” I grind out. “With all due respect it isn’t your existence on the line.”
I walk from the small hospital room that’s been holding me captive for more hours than I’d like to remember. The blue cast on my right forearm hangs like lead.
Footsteps falling in behind tell me Brady’s following. We make it outside before he chips in his two cents. “Hads, bud, I know you’re like this close”—he holds a hand up, pinching two fingers together—“but the title and the money ain’t worth it.”
I stop in my tracks and spin back. “You think that’s why I do this?”
“Don’t we all?” He looks taken aback, brows fallen, as he studies my face as if what I haven’t told him would be written right there. “What’s this really about, then? Maggie?”
Her name brings back the ache that’s been humming below the surface with each hour that passes that I don’t hear from her.
“Where’s my damn phone?” I snap.
“Oh, shit. Sorry.” He slips the phone from the pocket of his button-down.
Fuck me, Brady. I ought to wring his goddamn neck. I snatch the phone and slide the screen open.
Nothing.
Not one text.
No calls.
The screen is empty of notifications.
That can’t be right.
I tap the message icon and scroll, double-checking. Nothing new. I tap on her name and read the last messages . . .
Only the ones we sent before the event, two days ago.
My gut sinks as something heady and sickening courses through me in waves.
“Where is she, Brady?”
He shifts on his feet.
“She left, Hads. She quit.”
“The fuck?”
“She handed over your gear to Spence yesterday morning and hightailed it home. At least that’s where we think she went.”
I stare at the phone.
She left? Just like that.
“I’ll give you a moment,” Brady says, and the sympathy in his face has mine twist with hurt. Pain lances through my chest.
I tap Maggie’s name and hit call. I’m pacing a short length in the parking lot when she finally picks up.
“Sunshine?” I barely get the word out. I’m falling apart on the inside, each part of me slowly tearing away, piece by motherfucking piece.
“Hi, Hadley,” she whispers. I can hear the tremble in her voice, but it smooths over before she asks, “Are you okay?”
I shove my hand in my hair, gripping it tight.
No. I’m absolutely not okay.
I’m confused.
Hurt.
Angry.
“I’m fine,” I finally manage. “Doc says I’m fine.”
I’m also a liar. Add it to the long list of shit I’ve screwed up in the last eighteen months.
“That’s good. Are they letting you go home?” The last word wobbles.
I shove my hand through my hair before running it down my face.
“Yeah. Baby, where are you?”
“I’m at home, Hadley.” Her voice sounds off. Cold.
“Like, the ranch home?”
“No, the mountains home.”
There it is, my worst fears, my Achilles’ heel flayed open. “You’re not coming back, are you?”
A strangled sob hits the receiver and buries its way into my already bleeding heart. “I can’t, cowboy.”
My chest tightens to the point I can’t breathe. I sink to the curb and drop my head, the phone dangling in my hand. A searing heat, hurt, and something like devastation burn right through me.
Lifting the phone, I rasp, “It’s alright, Sunshine, I’ve got you. Go on and break my heart, baby.” I choke through the next breath. “I get it. You need to do what you need to do. And so do I, one last event, then it’s all over.”
“Hadley,” she whimpers. “No . . . please don’t.”
I grind my jaw shut.
Everyone I love leaves. The most important people in my life walk away. Why would this be any different? A boy whose father wandered off and never came home. The love of my fucking life, gone like the damn wind that rips through the trees in a summer storm.
Gone.
Never to be seen again.
Maggie sniffs on the other end of the line. “I can’t be part of that. I won’t watch you kill yourself over the ranch.” The last few words fade as she sobs erratically on the phone.
I come entirely undone, hand shaking around the phone, gut twisting as my heart splinters with a pain that could end a man.
“Baby, please don’t cry.” I sob, my entire body aching as she sucks in deep breaths that fall away to whimpers.
My heart shatters.
Lungs screaming for air, I try and fail to haul in a breath.
“Goodbye, cowboy,” she whispers.
The line goes dead.
No . . .
Fucking no.
The phone all but cracks in the vice grip I have around it.
FUCK.
My heart throbs with an ache I will remember till the day I die.
Which hopefully isn’t in a week’s time.
God willing.